Our Favorite Things: Music Technology Holiday Gift Picks from CDM

As if we’re not normally fantasizing about strange gear, electronics, t-shirts, software, and general oddities throughout most of the year, now is a special time when our thoughts turn to even more intricate rationalizations for buying great stuff for ourselves and our loved ones. If you’re looking for a last-minute gift, or just waiting until after various holidays to expand your studio, here are a few ideas. They read not only as a gift guide, but as a "Really Wonderful Things We’re Into" guide. And naturally, we don’t believe in throwaway consumption — readers on this site still avidly use Commodore 64s, after all. We’ve asked our contributors to come up with stuff they’ll treasure forever. Here are their favorites

I love these little things for keeping earbug cables and firewire cable out of jumbled mess:

Cable Turtle, $10 from Amazon.com; see cableturtles.co.uk for the full line and free UK delivery (above)

I love this bag-it has a nice padded laptop sleeve inside that’s removable as well as a padded strap. And there’s a lot of room inside for extra hard drives, a pair of headphones, some demo cds, vinyl if you need analog…etc. LOVE LOVE LOVE!

First up, the synthesizers.com ‘module a month’ system. $120 per month gets you a 22 space modular rack case, 8 modules and accessories. Receiving one part every 30 days gives you ample time to assemble and test the beast over the course of a year.

The PAiA Fatman analog monosynth remains an unbeatable value. The kit is offered in rack-mount or table top versions for under $250. It has earned the honor of becoming the world’s most modded synth, and dozens of useful tweaks are available online for intrepid builders, including VCO hard sync and a subharmonic generator.

The Sound Lab Mini-Synth is a great bare-bones unit. You can purchase the PC Board for a mere $30, although you’ll need to scrounge up another $70 or so in parts to build your very own cv/gate controlled analog noisemaker.

And, on the off chance that I win the lottery, here’s my dream synth for 2008…

John Bowen’s brand new Solaris keyboard synth offers a multitude of sound design possibilities. It’s now available for pre-order at $3399, with delivery starting in early 2008. The Solaris features vector synthesis, multiple filter models (Mini Moog ladder style, Prophet 5 SSM & Curtis emulations, comb filter), looping envelopes, six DADSRs per voice, effects unit, programmable espresso maker and so on. The initial production run will be a mere 100 units.

Designed by one of my college professors, Terry Setter, I had the chance to check out the TS-1 microphones during an orchestral recording not long ago, and they held their own against a matched pair of vintage B and K microphones. The TS-2 looks like a GREAT vocal mic for the studio.

I’ve wanted a Prophet ever since I found out that it was a primary instrument on Peter Gabriel’s ‘Passion’. Now I can get one at an affordable price, and not have to worry about tracking down the MIDI-mod, or pay through the nose to get a vintage unit brought back to spec.

Lee Sherman

We haven’t heard from Lee Sherman as recently here on CDM, as he’s been busy with other tech journalism gigs, but he was one of our first contributors and is particularly dedicated to soft synths.

With Bob Moog sadly departed, someone has to fly the flag for analog and who better than co-traveler Dave Smith? It’s not surprising that it sounds amazing and offers tons of hands-on control. But a full-featured poly analog synth at a price comparable to a digital one? Priceless.

Dave Smith Instruments Prophet ’08

As emulations go, this sample collection stands out for its comprehensive collection of Moog sounds, which includes nearly every product ever to bear the Moog moniker, not just lesser known synths like my beloved Rogue but the Moog Vocoder, and Etherwave Theremin, all the way up to the most recent Moog, the Little Phatty, over 1,700 basses, leads, pads and effects.

What could be more fun than a battery-powered synth that fits in a pocket and combines the touch interface of the Kaoss Pad with Korg synth sounds and effects? I’ll take this over a Nintendo DS any day. (Ed.: Wait a minute, Lee. Kaossilator is cool, but uh, don’t take away my DS!)

There are other digital emulations that accurately model the lovely tape flutter and crunchy magnetic head saturation of vintage tape echos, but you’d be hard pressed to find one that looks this cool. And the 70s nostalgia goes just far enough. The Space Echo has been reborn as a more stage-worthy pedal.

… and Stylophones

Not entirely sure how it got started, but it seems all of us want a classic Dubreq Stylophone, the vintage miniature, stylus-controlled instrument popularized by the likes of Kraftwerk ("Pocket Calculator") and Bowie ("Space Oddity").

As it happens, there are several ways to get one:

Stylophone.com has reconditioned 60s- and 70s-era Stylophones, though the price is rather steep: GBP55 / USD119.

Firebox.com has the original Stylophone for GBP14.95, though you’ll have to put an IOU in a Christmas box, etc.: they’re sold out until the beginning of 2008. (I’ll wait.)

The Fatman is sweet! Finished mine about a year ago, simple as shit to build. Already upgraded the OSC chips added a sub-harmonic generator, increased the filter to 24db/oct and added hard sync. Its educational!

Desaster Zapfilter^2 is just a wee little filter but it has a mean streak a mile wide, and is just $12.50.

Wusik.com is having an insane group buy special on Wusikstation 4 and something like 7 gigs of sound sets for $59.95. There's a sort of proto-Kore-like interface to the library too, so the thousands of presets aren't too onerous to navigate. (Though I do wish the drum sets, some of which are freakin' awesome, had consistent MIDI mappings.)

Goldbaby samples are excellent and cheap; I own and love the MPC60 Vol. 1 set.

I don't have any Elevayta plugins but they seem to have a bunch of inexpensive, useful tools. Space Boy and Clone Boy are on my wish list.

Sonitex STX-1260 is another thing on my list of inexpensive yet thus-far-unfulfilled desires.

This is Jordan (creator/designer) @ Gear Addict and I just wanted to say thanks for checking out and posting about our tshirt store. Let me know if you have any ideas you'd like to see on a shirt. We really appreciate any ideas and feedback so feel free to email me. Just want to wish everyone Happy Holidays! 🙂

Since I can't afford that Prophet this year, I guess I'll settle for a 3-OSC T-shirt.

Jordan Colburn

I'm thinking about the fatman so much. I'm going to school to become an electrical engineer and the kit seems just like my kind of thing. Might need to improve the soldering skills a bit though, i've melted down way too many circuit bends.